This week has been busy, but very entertaining- I've made a choice to start collaborating more with other musicians, which has pushed me to seek out some of the best musicians I've enjoyed working with in the past and start projects with them again.

First on my collaboration list is the talented guitarist and armed forces band leader Aaron Kusterer. He's toured with a bunch of the best musicians in the world, been featured in Guitar Player magazine, and most importantly, is one of the most passionate people about music that I know.

We're working on an acoustic Christmas album together, slated to be released in (you guessed it) December. The collaboration is happening long distance right now- Aaron is stationed in Hawaii, and we've been sending charts back and forth for the past 3 weeks. We'll be playing a Christmas show in mid December, along with several surprise guest appearances. I'll keep you posted on the show date and CD availability.

Another collaboration that I'm very excited about is with my father, singer songwriter and fine artist Michael Barfield. He's a huge part of why I'm in music, and has always been very supportive of my career choice.

We've been working on chronicling all of the songs he's written since the beginning of his music career in the early 70's to present, and I've been responsible for a lot of the production on the songs. This project has really challenged me on how to approach singer songwriter material from a production standpoint- how to stay true to the feel and spirit of the song and the time period in which it was written, and still innovate without getting to gadgety.

Michael released the first 18 song album about two weeks ago, along with a limited edition hand pulled woodcut album cover version that turned out beautifully. You can pick up a copy of the album here.

Lastly, many of you know that I toured quite a bit with my original pop/rock band Watching Judas for about 4 years, before we broke up about two years ago. All of us have remained friends, and we recently decided to begin collaborating on music together again. We had an album almost completed when we threw in the towel, and it's been so much fun to revisit this music and share musical ideas together again. At this point we have no idea if we'll end up releasing an album or just singles- we're just excited to be working together again.

So lots of cool stuff going on- I'll keep you all posted on show dates, albums, and the like. Thanks for enduring this more personal blog!